Olga Slavnikova

Genres

Contemporary Fiction

Biography

Olga Slavnikova was born in 1957 to a family of aerospace engineers near Sverdlosk (now Ekaterinburg) in the Urals. She graduated from the journalism faculty at Ekaterinburg State University in 1981 and began publishing fiction in the late 1980s (her first novel appeared in 1988), during which time she was also fiction editor, then managing editor, of the literary magazine Ural. Slavnikova has lived and worked in Moscow since 2001.


From the 1990s onwards Slavnikova has produced many acclaimed novels including Dragonfly the Size of a Dog, Alone in the Mirror and Immortal. She has received the Apollon Grigoriev Prize, the Polonsky Prize, the Bazhov Prize and, in 2007, for her novel 2017, the Russian Booker Prize.


Published in 2006, 2017 has been widely praised. Its anti-utopian set-up allows Slavnikova to dip into the near future in order to survey the century which has passed since 1917. A beguiling mix of romance and realism, 2017 is enriched with the folklore of the Urals, the drama of mountaineering expeditions and the gruesome practices of the gemstone industry.

 

Her latest novel Lighthearted was published in Russia in 2010.


Slavnikova also writes prolifically about contemporary literature and is coordinating the Debut Independent Literary Prize for young authors writing in Russian: each year the prize receives anything up to 50,000 entries.

Prizes and awards

2009

Shortlisted for the Big Book Award (Love in Carriage Seven / Любовь в седьмом вагоне)

2007Gjenima Prize, US
2006Russian Booker Prize (2017)
2002Shortlisted for the National Bestseller Award (Immortal / Бессмертный)
2001Polonsky Prize
2001Apollon Grigoriev Prize
1999Bazgov Prize (Alone in the Mirror / Один в зеркале)
1997

Shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize (Dragonfly the Size of a Dog / Стрекоза увеличенная до размеров собаки)

1996

Ural Prize

Books

Foreign Publications

In English

Sample translations

A Light Head (Легкая голова)

Contact information